The Johnson Murder
by Kautalya
Summary: With Holmes away on a case, and Lestrade clueless, Watson decides to play detective.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I wish I created Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Everyone knows I didn't.

**Chapter 1**

It was a particularly rainy morning in '88 when I was taken by surprise to see Watson bent over my makeshift lab table.

"Welcome back Holmes!" said he as he straightened up from the table. "I'm just about done." He added a few drops of a clear liquid to a watch glass containing a yellow residue. It turned purple.

"Atropine?" I ventured.

"Quite so Holmes."

"Perhaps you would care to tell me why I see you conducting tests for atropine?" I asked him.

"Surely you can deduce the reason yourself Holmes", he said mischievously, his eyes twinkling. While I could make a couple of intelligent guesses, I felt it would be wisest to let Watson carry on.

"Lestrade was here", he explained. "He came looking for you. Needed some help on a case, a murder actually. He was very disappointed to learn that you were abroad on a case of your own. When I told him that I had absolutely no idea about when you were expected back, he looked so pathetic that I promised to accompany him, have a look around and lay the facts before you as soon as you arrived. He has left some rather copious notes for you."

Watson strode across the room to my desk, picked up a sheaf of papers, and thrust them under my nose… foolscap paper, broad nib, black ink, probably Diamine, written using a rather old leather bound book (probably a diary) for support rather than at a desk. The notes, titled "THE JOHNSON MURDER" printed in large capital letters, were otherwise illegible. I added a distinct lack of penmanship to Lestrade's list of shortcomings.

"Would you be kind enough to read them to me Doctor" said I, handing him the papers back, and leaning back in my chair, closing my eyes.

Watson was saved the trouble of trying to decipher Lestrade's hand as the man himself burst into our rooms looking as perplexed as ever, a hint of desperation in his features. His eyes scanned the room, and on spotting me, he looked measurably relieved. "Ah Mr. Holmes, it is nice to see you back in London. The Johnson murder has just become a little more complicated. I am afraid Miss Eliza Edwards has disappeared."

"Really Lestrade, perhaps you'll be kind enough to tell me the facts of the case before bombarding me with details I can hardly comprehend. Do start from the beginning Lestrade."

"I thought Dr. Watson…"

"He did not get the chance. Pray proceed."

"Well it is like this", he said and started to narrate what he knew of Mr. Johnson's death.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I am a copy-cat. Everything belongs to A C Doyle.

**Chapter 2:**

"Well it is like this Mr. Holmes", said Lestrade, "Miss Edwards, Mr. Johnson's fiancée, decided to pay him a visit last week, at about eight o' clock, only to find him dead. Her screams alerted the beat constable, who in turn alerted Scotland Yard and I was put in charge of the case.

"Initially, it seemed rather cut and dried – the place was in a mess, the drawers pulled out, all the shelves in disarray, every corner seemed to have been searched. No money or valuables were found in his rooms. Everything seemed to point to a petty burglary.

We found Johnson on the floor. He had been shot twice, in the chest, at close range, after a struggle. It seemed as if he had surprised the intruder, tried to fight him, but ended up losing his life. The coroner put his death between one and three at night. I filed my report, and started looking for our usual suspects. Jim Smith had been seen in the area a few days before the murder, and disappeared shortly after, so I was pretty sure we had our man, but when we found him, he had a perfect alibi – he had been at an opium den at Upper Swandam Lane, and on emerging had created such a nuisance that he had been arrested, and detained for the next two days. It was then that I came to Baker Street, hoping to consult you, only to be told that you were working on a case abroad.

"To make matters worse, Miss Edwards insisted that Mr. Johnson's death was not motivated by any petty theft. She felt that Johnson had looked rather nervous the last few days she had met him, but had assured her there was nothing to worry about, though she was quite sure he was hiding something. Miss Edwards was adamant that there was a deeper meaning behind Johnson's death. While Miss Edwards was understandably upset, she continued to harass me. She refused to accept plain facts. All this I could have taken in my stride, but unfortunately, she is the sister of one of the senior correspondents of the Telegraph, Adam Edwards, who seems to agree with his sister. He has promised to track the progress of the case.

"And today, Miss Eliza Edwards has gone missing, and well, I hate to admit it, but it seems that Miss Edwards may have been right after all."

"What can you tell me about the late Mr. Johnson?" I asked Lestrade.

"He was a free-lance journalist, more of a penny-a-liner. Had an income of about two hundred to three hundred pounds a year. He lodged at Cecil Street, off the Strand, and was engaged this past month to get married to Miss Eliza Edwards, whom he met when he had visited her brother. He had no family, a few friends – all of them journalists, and no apparent enemies. He paid his rent regularly, and was according to his landlady, Mrs. Hurst, a good tenant."

The case, I felt, certainly had some features of interest; unfortunately with over a week since the murder, the trail had become a bit cold. Miss Edwards' disappearance though could probably throw us back on the track. Watson looked as if he was eager to put forth his own report of the case, and I invited him to do so. The inspector however, after finally finding me home, and impatient to continue his investigation with Mr. Edwards breathing down his neck, insisted that we leave immediately for Cecil Street, and implied that Watson could fill in the seemingly irrelevant details later.

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I got Upper Swandam Lane from the Man With the Twisted Lip :). As if I was not leaching enough from Doyle already!


	3. Chapter 3

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**Disclaimer: **Characters not mine

Half an hour later we stood outside Mr. Johnson's house in Cecil Street. It was a three storey red brick house, fashioned rather like a box, with small windows, placed at regular intervals of about eight feet overlooking the street. Our poor victim's flat was on the first floor. A police constable was stationed there, looking as if he would rather be someplace else. The downpour had become almost torrential, and the sky had darkened to a menacing dark grey. The weather was perfect – it created a heightened dramatic backdrop to a promising investigation. Watson and Lestrade though did not seem to share my enthusiasm. It was a pity it hadn't rained last week. One could have done with footprints, and Watson, rather conversant with my methods would have undoubtedly made plaster casts for my reference.

"Really, Holmes," Watson said peevishly, "damp isn't good for my leg. Do get in. It has been a week since the murder, what do you expect to find here. Besides, the rain has probably washed away anything of importance."

Watson had a point. So I "got in", followed by Lestrade and Watson. Fifteen rather high steps, made of stone, quarried near Edinburgh, led to the first floor of the house. The stairs had a wooden banister, once painted an exceptionally bright yellow colour, but thankfully discoloured because of use. A wooden skirting three feet high ran across the walls. The wall paper above it was a plain, pale green, the ceiling painted white. The stairs had recently been uncarpeted.

I ascended the stairs, making a careful observation of their junctions, where things have a tendency of getting stuck, and overlooked, perhaps "underlooked on purpose" by the help. There was a crevice on the final stair – as if someone had removed something stuck into a crack in the stair by forcing it out with something like a pen-knife. Within the crevice was a speck of powder, which under a closer examination under my lens, was crystalline. I placed it carefully in my pocket book. Lestrade was waiting impatiently at the open door of the flat, revealing the living room inside. Watson was following behind me. Now that he was inside and dry, he had lost his petulance and had all the time in the world.

The room was as Lestrade had described. Rather like what our rooms at Baker Street look like a day before the combined evil eye given to me by both the Doctor and the Landlady become devastatingly potent and force me to tidy up.

It took me two hours to go through all of Johnson's papers, which were, unlike Lestrade's, rather neatly ad legibly written, and another before I could organize them. There were blood stains on the carpet, and a small splatter on the curtain. The body was obviously in the Morgue, our next destination.

That however had to wait, as it turned out that Lestrade tended to lose his appetite after viewing bodies, and as he had no intention of going hungry the whole day, was leading us to the nearest restaurant serving lunch, when the duty constable accosted him.

"I'll be a moment Mr. Holmes, Doctor. Please go ahead. I'll join at your table."

As we sat down Watson, as is his custom, asked me for any conclusions. I, as is mine, till I obtain decisive proof, replied enigmatically, that there were some promising threads indeed, but theorizing would be a capital error at this stage. I regretted however that too little an amount of that crystalline substance was remaining to conduct a fruitful analysis. To which Watson replied, "That is atropine and it was I who forced it out of that crack with a scalpel."


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **Not mine...blah blah...not mine...

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It is not often that I am taken by surprise, but I confess I was taken aback by Watson's statement. While Watson is a brave, loyal and intelligent comrade, he has never been one for observation and deduction. Indeed, I remember, when we had first met, his dismissing the idea of deducing anything meaningful from a logical sequence of observations as "ineffable twaddle". It took me a moment to find my voice, and when I did, I found myself stupidly blurting out the single word, "What!"

Watson merely smirked.

"I thought you'd be surprised," said he.

"Indeed"

"Oh, and there is a lot more. I was going through Johnson's drawers, and I found more drugs, mostly opiates folded within his socks. Whoever had ransacked, and later murdered Johnson, was undoubtedly looking for them. There were no needle marks on his arms. Johnson was no addict. Neither did he trade in them – though there was a massive variety of drugs, many of them alkaloids, they were all tiny samples. He had labeled most of them, some he recognized, or had analysed, some had been named as extracts of plants, and there were some unlabelled ones too, drugs he had absolutely no idea about. I brought them to Lestrade's notice, but he did not think that they had any relevance to the case. At the time though, he was under the impression that the murder had been motivated by a burglary. In his words, 'every fifth man probably uses some drug or the other Doctor, Johnson's private life is no concern of ours.'"

"Really, Watson, you outdo yourself. I never would have expected you to go through somebody's sock drawer."

Watson looked sheepish. At my questioning glance he muttered that the day had been wet, and that he had needed to replace his socks.

At seeing me smile he said, "That is beside the point, Holmes. I brought back the drugs. They are in my desk drawer at Baker Street. I then went through the articles he had written, most of them had been published by the Telegraph, and none of them were on drugs. Their subjects varied from society gossip to politics. Apparently, our Mr. Johnson did not specialize in anything.

"I had been introduced to Miss Edwards and her brother by Lestrade. Mr. Edwards had known Johnson since their University days. They were both students of economics, and Edwards assured me that Johnson knew nothing of chemistry, medicine or botany. I am nearly certain somebody helped Johnson with the identification and labeling. I have been looking around the most obvious testing centres, and although I haven't had any luck so far, I met Stamford – he's still at Bart's – and he promised to look around. I have covered almost a third of London."

"My dear Watson, you have been most thorough."

"But why should these drugs be inducement to kill? As Lestrade said, every fifth man in London probably uses them."

"We shall see, Watson. We shall, see. Lestrade seems rather annoyed, doesn't he?"

Lestrade had just entered the restaurant, looking rather angry. He joined us at the table, muttered an apology for keeping us waiting and added something about constables needing constant spoon-feeding. A waiter came to take our order and Lestrade's mood improved considerably.

"All the post addressed to Mr. Johnson is picked up by Scotland Yard I trust," I asked Lestrade.

"Naturally." he replied

"Have you come across any bill from a hospital, college, or a pharmacy among Johnson's recent correspondence or perhaps from a chemist or botanist?"

He looked astonished, then said, "A Mr. Jason Murray, Chemist, sent a bill of £1 4d. I have it in the Johnson file down at the Yard."

"There you go, Watson." I said. Watson looked murderous.


End file.
